R. Stanley Williams of HP Labs gives a keynote on the memristor, covering the physics, crossbar computation, and potential for memory and new computer architectures.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended for years as the best technical introduction to memristors from the person who found the physical device.
“I encourage folks to watch this tech talk by HP Research Labs on the discovery of the memristor and implementation details.”HN comment, 2014
“There's a presentation by R. Stanley Williams linked to in the article, and it is well worth watching.”
Surprising tidbits on memristor logic and compiled code density
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There's a presentation by R. Stanley Williams linked to in the article, and it is well worth watching. this video It has some tidbits I didn't expect. Teaser: "one of the guys in my group has...built a compiler to compile C code using implication logic rather than NAND logic and, interestingly enough, when we play with that the compiled code we get is always more condensed...by about a factor of 3"
Strongly recommendsmbenjaminsmithJun 2012
“The Williams talk on youtube is really good.”
Covers the memristor element, on-CPU memory and new CPU architectures
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I don't understand why Leon Chua keeps popping up first when memristors are discussed. Williams at HP is the person that made it a reality. Chua postulated the existence of the memristor but as far as I know made no progress on a working example. That's a bit like giving da Vinci credit for the invention of the helicopter. The Williams talk on youtube is really good. He discusses the element itself, its use in memory (as vast amounts of on-CPU memory) as well as the possibility of new CPU architectures based on it: this video
Strongly recommendsreitzensteinmJul 2012
“his excellent memristor talk”
Memristor talk including stacking hundreds of chips atop a processor
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We may actually see them both happening at once; one of the things R. Stanley Williams talks about in his excellent memristor talk is a method they developed for stacking hundreds of chips on top of a processor, which he says may end up providing just as much benefit as the memristor itself. The possibilities that could be opened up by having a terabyte or more of extremely fast non volatile storage attached by a bus as large as you care to make it directly on top of a CPU are mind boggling. Then when you consider that you can use them as FPGAs for computation instead and dynamically reconfigure them... wow. Memristors are only a year or two away from commercial availability, though it will probably be a while after that until they live up to the hype. We live in exciting times. The talk: this video
Strongly recommendsachilleJun 2014
“I encourage folks to watch this tech talk by HP Research Labs on the discovery of the memristor and implementation details.”
Deep technical dive from physics to crossbar computation
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I encourage folks to watch this tech talk by HP Research Labs on the discovery of the memristor and implementation details. It goes into the gory technical details, from the low level physics to the construction of the gates, the truth tables, and the high level computation possibilities once chips are assembled in a crossbar package. > this video
Strongly recommendsjmpeJun 2014
“Seriously, watch it.”
Miniaturization enabling memristor tech and architecture speedups
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How i learned to stop worrying and love the miniaturization: this video Seriously, watch it. Memristor-tech relies on this kind of miniaturization and can provide a speed boost in several areas in current architectures. Secondly, having worked for semi: there's a lot of conservative force holding back development. We could have had current tech with much less worries than we have now if they didn't respond so allergically to everything that looks a little exotic in the CMOS process, like high-k dielectrics.
Strongly recommendsFD3SANov 2014
“Definitely worth a watch if you're interested in the future of computing”
Williams on memristors and post-Von Neumann computing
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This is an interesting implementation of the memristor, but I still think the real breakthrough will be in the two state memristor [1]. Once memristor fabrication technology is mature, we are going to see a massive paradigm shift away from the Von Neumann architecture. All the details are in the linked video by HP's Stan Williams. Definitely worth a watch if you're interested in the future of computing 1. this video (start at 38m for future computing implications) EDIT: Another video [2], but a bit more in depth. Recommended if the material in the first was a bit confusing as Stan was short on time to explain some of the details. 2. link
RecommendsmodelessApr 2010
“For more technical details try this video of a keynote by R. Stanley Williams”
Technical keynote on memristors by R. Stanley Williams
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For more technical details try this video of a keynote by R. Stanley Williams: this video Submitted as a YC story here: link
RecommendsplasmaOct 2011
“Watch HP research's Stanley Williams describe the memristor and what they are working towards in more detail on YouTube”
Williams describes the memristor and HP's goals in detail
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Watch HP research's Stanley Williams describe the memristor and what they are working towards in more detail on YouTube: this video
RecommendsInclinedPlaneFeb 2012
“Here's a useful, but lengthy, talk on the subject”
Lengthy talk on memristors as nonvolatile storage and FPGA-like devices
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Here's a useful, but lengthy, talk on the subject: this video Memristors look extremely likely to be able to provide non-volatile storage with latency, access speeds, and density higher than existing DRAM and flash. They also look like they can be used to make FPGA-like devices which can approach the speed, power efficiency, and logic density of custom designed ASICs but with extremely fast reconfiguration speed. And those seem to be the less fascinating aspects of memristor technology.
RecommendskbdJul 2012
“Here's a great presentation from R. Stanley Williams[1]”
Presentation by Williams on HP's memristor
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> Historically, electrical circuits were crafted with three basic building blocks: the capacitor, the resistor, and the inductor. But in 1971, University of California at Berkeley professor Leon Chua predicted the existence of a fourth: the memristor, short for memory resistor. > Then, in May of 2008, HP announced that it had actually built a memristor, thanks to HP Labs Fellow R. Stanley Williams and others working in the company’s research arm. Here's a great presentation from R. Stanley Williams[1], via prior discussion at HN[2]. [1] this video [2] link
RecommendssomethingnewFeb 2014
“check out this talk on memristors”
Impressive recent HP work on memristors
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If you want to see something awesome HP has done "recently" check out this talk on memristors. Other than that I don't know... this video
RecommendsmitchtyJun 2014
“Here watch this for a decent introduction.”
Decent introduction to the memristor as fourth circuit element
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What don't you buy about them being the fourth fundamental circuit type? Its mathematically provable, proven in the 60's actually. Here watch this for a decent introduction. this video
RecommendsFD3SAMay 2015
“here [1] is an excellent resource by the man who discovered the first physical memristor”
Theory and applications from the discoverer of the physical memristor
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The top comment mentions DARPA research, but for those who are actually interested in the theory behind the memristor and its potential applications, here [1] is an excellent resource by the man who discovered the first physical memristor. Furthermore, there is a huge amount of open access journal articles and wikipedia material on memristors. DARPA is nowhere close to the cutting edge, SK Hynix is already tooling ReRAM fabs for mass production. 1. this video
Cites itdanmaz74Jun 2014
Clarified that state changes only under high pressure differential
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I read this analogy and immediately started thinking how complicated it would be to use this effect if the diameter is always changing, every time you make your water flow. Then I watched the video posted by achille [1]. If I understood the video correctly, the analogy should specify a fundamental thing: The diameter of the pipe only increases or decreases if the pressure differential is very high. You can make your water flow at low pressure without affecting the diameter in any measurable way. This should make using memristors practically much easier. [1] this video
Cites itdanmaz74Jun 2014
Speaker says earlier papers noted the effect without linking memristors
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Interestingly, this is exactly what the chief of HP labs said in this video [1]: That lots of papers noted the effect and talked about anomalies, but no-one made the connection to the memristors before them. He also says that the effect is only really noticeable at nano scales (because it needs incredibly high electric fields). EDIT: on second thought, that's not the case, because the HP memristor is not a memristor in the sense of the of the original paper describing it - it has nothing to do with the magnetic flux. It can only be described with the same set of equations, so, it behaves like a memristor, but is not "actually" a memristor that completes the set [2]. That is, if I understood the video correctly (but I think I did, as the speaker himself talked about a "trick" in the beginning of the video). [1] this video [2] link
Cites itdanmaz74Jun 2014
Shows write with short high voltage, read with low voltage
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memristors, like core memory, are destructively read but are they really, with HP implementation - which is not a "real" memristor? In the video presentation [1] they show that they change the state of the memristor using very short "high" voltage impulses, and then measure its resistance using lower voltages that do not make the oxygen vacancies migrate - and thus do not change the state, if I understood that correctly. If they can use these low voltages (and low currents) to effectively read the state without altering it, they get incredibly simplified management of the memory, and incredibly low power read operations, which would justify their assertion that their memristors can be packed in 3d without thermal problems. [1] this video
Cites itdewarrn1Sep 2024
2010 talk that made memristors seem solved
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That's funny, I had thought that memristors were a solved problem based on this talk from a while back (2010!): this video , but I gather HP never really commercialized the technology. More recently, there does seem to be interest in and research on the topic for the reasons you and the GP post noted (e.g., link ).
